the great council being postponed to another day.

During the meeting, Raudin, Frontenac's engineer, was tracing out the
lines of a fort, after a predetermined plan, and the whole party, under
the direction of their officers, now set themselves to construct it. Some
cut down trees, some dug the trenches, some hewed the palisades; and with
such order and alacrity was the work urged on, that the Indians were lost
in astonishment. Meanwhile, Frontenac spared no pains to make friends of
the chiefs, some of whom he had constantly at his table. He fondled the
Iroquois children, and gave them bread and sweetmeats, and, in the
evening, feasted the squaws, to make them dance. The Indians were
delighted with these attentions, and conceived a high opinion of the new
Onontio.

On the seventeenth, when the construction of the fort was well advanced,
Frontenac called the chiefs to a grand council, which was held with all
possible state and ceremony. His dealing with the Indians, on this and
other occasions, was truly admirable. Unacquainted as he was with them, he
seems to have had an instinctive perception of the treatment they
required. His predecessors had never ventured to address the Iroquois as
"Children," but had always styled them "Brothers"; and yet the assumption
of paternal authority on the part of Frontenac was not only taken in good
part, but was received with apparent gratitude. The martial nature of the
man, his clear decisive speech, and his frank and downright manner, backed
as they were by a display of force which in their eyes was formidable,
struck them with admiration, and gave tenfold effect to his words of
kindness. They thanked him for that which from another they would not have
endured.

Frontenac began by again expressing his satisfaction that they had obeyed